I’ve made progress.

I got through a bunch of stuff on my desk, went through some journals, and caught up on email. For the first time in forever, I made a bulletin board.

The board is a puzzle and kids can win a prize if they figure it out. One girl already did, which made my librarian heart happy.

Yesterday, we had storytime in the morning, and then in the afternoon I visited Pat at the Sully Branch, which kind of blew my mind. The new library is lovely and big and the place is hopping (it’s in a complex with a rec center and a school)–really a lot of logistics to manage there. I was glad to see it and get to visit with Pat, both of which I’ve been wanting to do for a long while.

Today, I went to the Friends of WPL meeting, which is always interesting. Our Friends group does a crazy-lot of fundraising for us. They’ve funded all our programming in the Children’s Room for years now, and they’ve funded more projects for us than I can count. I can’t look around the Children’s Room without finding something they’ve been a part of, and it’s always kind of inspiring to attend their meetings. They Believe In Libraries in a big way.

This evening, I worked my normal Wednesday night reference shift, and (perhaps ironic on a week that’s all about not having reference shifts) I was struck by how much I enjoy helping people find books. It’s something I do every day without thinking about it much, but there was this girl who came in tonight with her painstakingly organized hand-written list of books in the various Warriors series, and when I saw it, everything in me wanted to make sure this girl got the books she wanted. We found a nice big stack of them, and that girl was just so darned happy. Same thing happened later with a kid looking for the Seekers series (it was like Official Erin Hunter Night at the library) and an adult looking for Malcolm Gladwell books.

So much of my last couple years has been about accomplishing big projects. I suppose it’s appropriate that I’d use my sabbatical as a time to appreciate smaller ones.